The Return, a later version, in Russian, reworked, appeared in 2003 and is available on Netflix in the foreign film section. Easily accessible, you can stream by pushing a button.
The film could have been shot in black and white. If there is a musical score, it passes in and out of your ears without memory. The sounds you remember are the natural sounds of nature: a hatchet chopping wood, water splashing against a shore, and the pull of the oars through water. Nature sounds.
When the “father” returns after 12 years, he meets near total silence. The wife says fewer than 50 words in the film, the husband less than 200. The two sons, Andrei and Ivan, do all the talking and all the speculating.
So what can such a film be about that makes it worth 90 minutes of our time? The focus centers on the boys—on their relationship and on their coming to grips with the “lost” father. We watch them and listen to them respond to him while on a failed fishing trip. They visit an island instead. Apparently, he has bigger fish to fry, but he says off-handedly that he “doesn’t like fish.” What gives?
The hints about who he was and where he went come through the sons. But don’t look for anything overt. Their world is covered in clouds and mist, appropriate symbols, the shroud that covers the father’s identity.
What, then, is the larger meaning here? One theme explores anxiety separation. What happens to children when the father leaves? He may not be Russian Special Ops or a criminal [there are hints]. Social scientists tell us the single most traumatic event in a child’s life is loss of the father—for any reasons.
Both Ivan and Andrei are losing their moorings when the film opens. They are living dangerously. Secondly, where is the communication in this family, and what does the film teach us about talking to each other? The aunt does not speak at all. At their first breakfast, the father merely says “hello.”
A third, deeper possibility, is the Freudian notion of “the search for the father.” For Freud, an atheist, who did not go deeply enough and religiously enough, missed the point. On the emotional-psychological level, there is that ongoing search for a/The Father. Lose him and you have a vacuum to fill, which creates Freud’s laundry list of childhood traumas, some of them sexual in nature.
But I reject Freud here and seek a deeper religious answer. Yes, we seek The Father, the Father of us all. That core archetype is where our meaning and fulfillment lie. Our spiritual journey is an effort to return to The Father---a road of trials, a yoke both heavy and light to bear. The paradox depends on what kind of day you’re having. As my granddaughter, Ashley says, “it’s all in the journey.”
Finally, perhaps the film helps us examine in a displaced way the trauma children feel when parents who separate come back together. Perhaps, it dramatizes the return of the father from Iraq or prison or desertion from the family itself.
In any case, the father’s inscrutability, the vague, even fragile replacement by the aunt and the mother, and the growing Cain and Abel animosity between the brothers leaves us with a breach that does not close in the film.
Can we bridge such emotional gaps in our own lives? A returning college student for Christmas experiences the readjustment to what he was and what he has become in 15 short weeks.
Or what of the LDS missionary who attempts to transition from Mexico City to Simi Valley, California? Things have changed. Perhaps the “girl” is gone and the wounds are deep. And perhaps as so-called adults, we take that very pain too lightly. Finally, there is the returning serviceman.
Can you set up an outpost, say, Restrepo [a famous documentary now on Netflix] and be the same? A Dutch documentary [also on Netflix] follows a squad of 12 men to Afghanistan, to what they collectively call, “The Hellhole of the world.”
They arrive home: one dead, three wounded. Within a year, 8 of the original 12 returned to Afghanistan. One fair-haired Dutchman asks, "How can Holland now make use of a man who can only fire an M-60 machine gun?"
Yes, departures are hard. Are returns any easier?
What about the reuniting of old friends?
ReplyDeleteLarry, Shauna and I are in Huntsville, Alabama visiting Ian and Sarah. We fly to Austin next Tues early for a week with Todd and Jen in Bryan, returning to SLC on Tues Jan 3, Would the visit of old friends be worthy of a try, if not a film? Call or text: Shauna 208 313 5622 or me 208 201 4149. Scott
Not knowing the movie except through your review, my comment may be off the mark, and it's been a long time since I read Thomas Wolf's "You Can't Go Home, Again." But I think some of the same theme may be in Wolf.
ReplyDeleteMy return from Mexico in 1952 followed by the girl jilting me on the first date (a Delta Phi Dear John dance ironically)had me wanting to go back to Mexico. What's happening? I asked the Lord. There was a certain displacement then that never did get resolved.
Sometimes I still feel disconnected with my present, but the dimness of memory can't find a past to reconnect to.
The wedding I performed today included a Mexican mother of the groom. I visited with her in Spanish after the ceremony. In an odd way I felt perfectly comfortable talking Spanish to a stranger as if she had been an old friend.
When I talk to you, however, it's as if there had never been a separation or break in the action. We pick up mid-syllable from where we left off.
donny
Yes, donny, we have Scotty "reuniting" and you "returning." For us three and our wives we will be simply taking over where we left off, as you say. I'm thinking of Decker, who will arrive a little late, so we will be in medias res, but that's old territory for him. He and Scott will be so deep into climbing [or falling from] the Tetons, we will assume no one really left the circle. The Eternal Return of LDS: we end where we began--sort of.
ReplyDeleteOr as another Thomas says:
ReplyDelete"And you, my father, there on the sad height
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray"
It's better even to have a curse from the Father and know he is there than having him "go gentle into that good night. . . [with] the dying of the light."
Is that another poem I understand different from everyone else?"
donny
Donny, you leave me with a mystery line: "There was a certain displacement then that never did get resolved." Then comes, "sometimes I feel disconnected with my present that, but the dimness of memory can't find a past to reconnect to." Would a past "objective correlative? bridge present and past? At 82 you have a right to see the bridge either ebbing out to sea or not see it anymore at all, collapsed, metal turned to rust, now resting on the floor of the bay. But I stray here because I want the links, bridges, the symbols, i.e., objective correlatives to still function for you. In fact, you and Scott and Gene probably build these bridges better than anyone else I know. Decker was magnificent. I wander again. It's the early hour. I went to sleep at 9 so I don't know where I should be: getting into bed or out of bed. I believe the bridges prevail, even if rusted and broken, rolling on the sea floor. As an avid journal-keeper all the moments between the First Mexico [and the Delta Phi dance and now, "singing in Spanish," as Brother Guterrez says, you are still connected. Gene thinks we all must put together some record of the experience here; we must capture the consciousness. He's fine with any number of approaches, i.e., Scott's art, your painting, as well, and the poetry you both write. It hasn't taken me long to see the value of the Texas months, which bonded me with Lora and family even more deeply, and forced me into the blog-posting. Certain "old verities" [Faulkner] surfaced here and there, and, as you say, triggered meaningful personal responses I hadn't consciously thought of as helpful to others. The earlier comment a few days ago about being a "spiritual/poetic father." pulled you into a role neither you nor Scott had imagined, perhaps. And when my own student, Zack, now a medical student, changed roles and became my physical doctor, I wanted to hold on to that spiritual/intellectual role as father-teacher. He said, "I think in these moments I always fail you." Was my eventual death a severing, a razing of the bridge for him, he who no longer believes in bridges of consciousness beyond himself replicated and refined only in his child/children? Perhaps his hard news was sobering, taking me to the apparent reality of real pain and disability which lurk ahead. He did not speak of a "gentle good night," but of real, palpable pain and the "heart" choice my moment of decision in Robert Frost's Woods as a path that is overgrown with briars and thistles, a kind of wild journey without a moon, without consciousness, only awareness of pain. In that moment perhaps he morphed into a "father," as you and Scotty and Gene and Decker have so done in my life as I have found myself lost in the swamps of madness and pain, holding on to Carolyn, confused and terrified, herself driven [not led] by a brain afire with chaos. Perhaps our passing is a labor intensive project "Over There," as "fathers," acting like Father Socrates, the midwife, delivers us to the door after the split-second "wandering" for the "Space of many hours" in the tunnel. I hope for Super-speed transport and Light, quickly visible from afar. Hopefully this spiritual gauntlet is the polar opposite of "Run of the Arrow," where someone, perhaps, William Holden, doesn't get hand shakes and embraces, but clubs and knife cuts. Perhaps that journey is for those walk by force into darkness and light that is indirect and dim at best.
ReplyDeleteThe final Conference address of Bruce McConkie for me doesn’t seem so much a bridge as an awareness that the only barrier between here and there, the veil, is thin. When we have complete faith, like Bruce McConkie, like Mahonri, like Richard Scott, it no longer exists.
ReplyDeleteWhile I may not yet have sufficient faith to dissolve the veil, I have enough faith to know they have it. It is like my teenage non-testimony. I did not yet feel worthy myself to say I know, but had no doubts the testimonies I heard were true. When the testimony came, the realization also came it has always been there.
When I open the door, and my father (lower case) takes my hand to guide me through, I will not only feel at ease, but will not feel a stranger. It will all open up at once (a fifth dimension? when time is no more) and I “will know as I am known.” [I may even rejoice in Spanish]
Objective correlative? Mine is more a subjective irrelative. Instead of “cogito ergo sum” [I know no Latin, but Google does] it’s more like “sentio ergo scis” : I feel, therefore I know.
In your case it will be Carolyn who takes your hand. [no priesthood needed].
And if Nita goes first it will be she who takes my hand.
I watched Kolya again after reading your observations on a film you've watched (and listened to) many times. A couple of days later I sat down in front of Human Resources Manager, which was equally moving. I will share that one with some family members.
ReplyDeleteThings have slowed down here and I'm enjoying the moments before Christmas. I've helped Jennifer in the kitchen for the past two days. Like you, I'm mostly the willing cleaner and scrubber, but no one has ever complained when I put on my apron and head for the sink.
You've harvested some great films for your "recommended viewing" list. Bless your insomniac heart (literally) for that gift.
Your reading list from the blog and from our phone conversations will keep me going for a good while. There's a cruise planned for late February, part work, part play. 100 Years of Solitude is on my i-pad along with several non-fiction pieces. We continue to plow through Ron Chernow's biography of Washington; extraordinary. Early this morning I started listening to The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt, whose book, Will in the World you much enjoyed.
Happy Christmas Eve to all.
Michael